A Little Exercise
by Amicitia1
Summary: The Brotherhood try to solve their problems through fitness and better health.


A/N: This story takes place pre-HeX Factor. Just enough plot to hold it together. Mostly BoM silliness.  
  
  
It was a relatively quiet afternoon in the Brotherhood house. Fred was snacking on a party-size bag of chips, Toad was complaining to no one in particular about the most recent episode of his on-going social problems, and Lance was thinking. He was thinking hard, and was only allowed to continue doing so by virtue of the fact that no one had noticed him yet.  
  
"I got it!" he said, banging his fist on the nearest table.  
  
"Got what?" Fred asked.  
  
"A winning lottery ticket?" Toad guessed.  
  
"A horrible disease, maybe," Tabitha mumbled.  
"An idea, stupid," Lance whacked Toad on the head.  
  
"Who let Rock-head have a thought?" Tabitha demanded. "Toad, I thought it was your day to watch him."  
  
"I was!" Toad paused. "Going to. After I finished releasing my inner tadpole."  
  
"Shut up!" Lance kicked Toad in the shin.  
  
"Aah!" Toad screamed. "Violence! I don't feel safe in my own home!"  
  
"Doesn't *anybody* want to know how we can break this disgusting cycle of failure we've fallen into?" Lance pleaded for an audience.  
  
"Hold on..." Pietro said. He threw down the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which he'd begun reading five minutes ago. "Okay, done with that. What do you want? Anything to keep me from being bored."  
  
"I know why we never beat the X-geeks!" Lance announced.  
  
"Because we're chronic losers?" Toad ventured.  
  
"Rhetorical question," Lance rolled his eyes.  
  
"Re-what?"  
  
"Technically, it wasn't a question," Pietro pointed out. "But we aren't going to win by explaining grammar to them, so get on with it."  
  
"Okay, look," Lance started. Toad stared wildly around the room. Lance pointedly ignored him and continued, "They have a Danger Room! They practice! That's nearly cheating!"  
  
"Whoop-dee," Tabitha spun her finger in the air.  
  
"So we're going to train in the basement," Lance phrased his statement carefully, trying not to leave any loopholes for his teammates to question.  
  
"The basement," Pietro said flatly.  
  
"Yeah. The basement," Lance repeated.  
  
"Lance, there's nothing down there but rats and dust bunnies."  
  
"Too bad. Let's go," Lance ordered.  
  
The fivesome trooped down the rickety wooden stairs.  
  
"Whoa..." Pietro whispered. "Forget what I said. These are dust *capybaras*."  
  
There was, however, absolutely nothing of any use in the room.  
  
"Somebody go get something to throw at me!" Lance demanded.  
  
Tabitha immediately produced an energy bomb.  
  
"Not that!"  
  
She shrugged and threw it at Toad, who let loose with another of his signature screams.  
  
Pietro zipped upstairs and returned with an enormous armload of tennis ball canisters. Fred stared. "Wow, Pietro," he said in awe. "I didn't know you played tennis."  
  
"A little," Pietro shrugged, passing canisters to everyone except Lance. The four armed and not so very dangerous mutants each picked a corner of the room, and Lance stood in the middle.  
  
"Now throw!" Lance said, after a long pause during which they had all just stared at each other.  
His teammates had really *horrible* aim. Lance avoided all the tennis balls by pretty much standing in one place. Then Fred took a good shot, and Lance nearly lost his head. Literally.  
  
"Ow," he said, peeling himself off the floor. "Forget this."  
  
Pietro beaned Tabitha just for fun. She responded by putting a rat down his pants.  
  
"Yeah," Lance sighed, laying down again. "Forget this."  
  
**********  
  
"Okay!" Lance announced the next afternoon. "I've got it now!"  
  
"Oh, won't you enlighten us?" Tabitha said in a tone that clearly said she would rather have slammed her head into a wall repeatedly for the next three hours.  
  
"Rhetorical question?" Toad said hopefully.  
  
"The froggy wonder grows ever more literate," Pietro dead-panned. "Now he might get an 8 on his SAT verbals."  
  
"Eight?" Toad started counting his fingers. "Is that a lot?"  
  
"Hey!" Lance waved his arms. "Somebody pay attention?"  
  
Fred blinked at him.  
  
"Good enough," Lance sighed. "See, here's the problem. The X-geeks also have a-"  
  
"Oh!" Toad interrupted. "Eight! That's almost all!"  
  
Lance slapped his forehead.  
  
"Sorry," Toad shrank into a seat. "I'll be quiet now."  
  
"About time," Lance grumbled. "Now look - no, Toad! Agh! The X-geeks have a fitness room! They work out! We need more exercise!"  
  
Fred reached uncertainly for the remote.  
  
"Channel-surfing is not exercise," Lance ruled.  
  
Toad bounced on the couch.  
  
"Marginal."  
  
Tabitha helped herself to some of Fred's pretzels.  
  
"No."  
  
"Man, this is too hard," Toad complained. "I can't do this exercise stuff, yo."  
  
"We don't have a fitness room either, remember?" Pietro chimed in. "And I am *not* running laps in the basement," he added quickly.  
  
"We'll join a gym," Lance explained. "Everybody's doing it these days."  
  
"Must be good then," Fred nodded.  
  
"Hello?" Pietro waved his hand in front of Lance's face. "Membership money?"  
  
"Bake sale!" Fred shouted with much excitement.  
  
Lance slammed his head on the table.  
  
**********  
  
"Door's locked," Toad said sadly. "Guess we'll have to go home."  
  
"Let's review," Lance said patiently. "Why are we here?"  
  
"To exercise!" Toad shouted.  
  
"Yeah..shush. Why are we here after dark?"  
  
"To...um," Toad furrowed his brow. "Because we wanna?"  
  
"Because we're sneaking in," Lance reminded him.  
  
"Oh!" Toad fell into a really exaggerated spy-crawl. "Lookit me! I'm sneaking!"  
  
Lance sighed. "Blob?"  
  
Fred neatly removed the door from its hinges and leaned it against a handy wall. Quick as a wink, Tabitha slipped an energy bomb into the alarm box. There was an explosion, and silence returned.  
  
"Okay!" Lance clapped his hands. "Let's exercise! Toad? You can get off the floor now."  
  
**********  
  
"Help?" Toad asked in a small voice.  
  
Lance appeared from the other room. "What's your problem, Toad?"  
  
"How does the stair-climber work?"  
  
"You...climb the stairs."  
  
"Oh!" Toad jumped onto the pedals and looked up expectantly. For quite a while. "Lance?" he asked finally. "Where are the rest of the stairs?"  
  
"There aren't any," Lance explained. "Just the ones you're standing on."  
  
Toad jumped up and down, the result being that he nearly fell head-first over the front of the equipment.  
  
"Ow," he coughed.  
  
"Stupid thing!" Pietro shouted from the treadmill.  
  
"What now?" Lance crossed the room.  
  
"It won't go faster than 10 miles per hour," Pietro griped.  
  
"So...?"  
  
"Hello!" Pietro banged on the controls. "That's a crawl! Any slower than 35, and I fall asleep!"  
  
"I got it," Tabitha wandered over and slipped an energy bomb into the motor casing. The machine jumped, sparked, and took off at a speed it was never meant to reach.  
  
"D'wah!" Pietro pitched forward before he was able to match the hectic pace of the runaway treadmill. "Thanks Tabby!" he shouted over the noise, after he found his stride.  
  
In the other room, Fred took a pair of 200-pound barbells off the rack and started doing some sets. Then he spotted something that made him very uneasy. "Hey little buddy, hold these a minute?" he passed the weights to Toad and walked over to turn on the idle TV.  
  
"Blob?" said a very strained voice from very near the floor.  
  
Fred turned around. "Toad?" he peered at his prone friend. "You sneaking again?"  
  
"Less...weight..."  
  
"Oh yeah..." Fred retrieved his barbells.  
  
"Ow...my splein..."  
  
Back in the other room, Tabitha had two cents to spare. "Doesn't look like our fearless leader is doing much," she commented.  
  
"I don't have super work-out powers!" Lance complained.  
  
"Then you'll just have to use your own *normal* powers," Pietro sneered.  
  
Lance grumbled and got on a stationary bike. "Hey," he said, after a while. "Tabby's not doing anything either."  
  
She threw an energy bomb at him.  
  
"Objection withdrawn," he groaned.  
  
**********  
  
The next morning, Lance was far too bright and cheery. "Hey!" he said, knocking on bedroom doors. "Don't you guys feel great today?"  
  
"No!" Toad shouted. "I feel like I've been gored and then sat on by an irate elephant!"  
  
"I missed my TV shows," Fred lamented.  
  
"I was running for *five* *hours*," Pietro groaned. "And then I hit a wall."  
  
"What?" Fred appeared in his doorway.  
  
"The thing wouldn't stop!" Pietro went wild-eyed. "I couldn't get off! I had to stop running!"  
  
"Splat," Tabitha interjected on her way to the bathroom.  
  
"Yeah, well see if I ever let you near anything mechanical again!" Pietro shouted after her.  
In response, she slammed the door.  
  
Lance took the hint and closed the figurative door on that particular path to self-improvement.  
  
  
Notes  
  
"Lance was thinking" - Some people, it's just dangerous to let them think.  
  
Lord of the Rings trilogy - The longest book I could think of on short notice.  
  
Rhetorical question - When someone asks you something and doesn't really expect an answer. But you knew that, right? Rhetorical question. :)  
  
Dust capybaras - Bunnies are rodents. Capybaras are the largest rodents in the world. It's *very* dusty.  
  
"An 8 on his SAT verbals" - In case you've managed not to hear of this American standardized test which is the bane of every high-schooler's existance, the SAT has two parts (verbal and math). On each part you can score up to 800 points. You get 200 points for putting your name on the paper. If you miss that question, you get an automatic 0.  
  
"Must be good then" - Fred obviously suffers from Bandwagon Syndrome.  
  
"Less weight" - If you've read _The Crucible_ or know anything about the Salem witch trials, you may have heard of Giles Corey, who was pressed to death by stones. He refused to testify, instead saying only "more weight".  
  
Normal powers - In an episode of the Powerpuff Girls, our three little heroines decide to take the day off, leaving the townspeople to deal with a rampaging monster. The girls give the citizens hints, but remind them that they'll have to pull it off using their own normal powers. 


End file.
